MP's Indigenous work call faces rough road

A critic of Alan Tudge's Indigenous commute to work call says the road is too dangerous for people to drive between Santa Teresa and Alice Springs on a daily basis.

A resident of Santa Teresa in Central Australia says forcing people to commute to Alice Springs to find jobs is not a reasonable solution to unemployment in the region.

The Prime Minister's Parliamentary Secretary for indigenous affairs, Alan Tudge, has suggested unemployed Aboriginal people in the community should travel the 80 kilometres to Alice Springs to find work.

Judy Lovell runs the community's arts centre and says there are already a large number of unemployed people in Alice Springs.

"I don't necessarily follow the logic that if you can commute you can do all of these other things, that all these other things are going to happen," she said.

"I do not know where of all these other jobs would be in Alice Springs that people would suddenly come running into town for."

Ms Lovell says the road is too dangerous for people to drive between Santa Teresa and Alice Springs on a daily basis.

"The road is no way appropriate for use by lots of people," she said.

"You would not keep the cars running.

"The road would take the cars out very quickly."

Mr Tudge is overseeing a Federal Government review of Indigenous employment schemes, including the Remote Jobs and Communities Program introduced by Labor.

He says the review will report back next year but he already has concerns about existing programs.

He visited communities across central Australia last week, including Santa Teresa.

In an opinion article in The Australian newspaper today, he wrote that changes were needed in collective thinking about Indigenous employment.

"In most remote communities, policies to get people into jobs are caught in a downward spiral," he wrote.

"Every reason under the sun is accepted as a barrier against work."

He said that he had been "dismayed to find out that too often language about remote Indigenous Australians does not focus on what people can do but on the barriers that prevent them being work ready".